A blooming good blog!

November 14, 2009

Greetings! I'm delighted to be guest blogging today and talking a little bit about how I kick started my mystery writing career. Probably my biggest qualification was being the kid who snuck into cemeteries late at night on a dare, whispered ghost stories around the campfire, and devoured Nancy Drew books under the covers.

And late at night, when the wind is howling and the house is creaking, I still believe there might be a body stashed in that old trunk in the attic. And when I finally visited New Orleans and wandered through their incredibly spooky above-ground cemeteries, I think I even started believing in vampires.

But as much as I longed to be a mystery writer, I landed in advertising instead. I wrote and produced TV commercials, then ended up heading my own firm for nearly 15 years. Still, the mystery bug gnawed at me. So writing evenings and weekends, I chipped away at Old Masters, a thriller about stolen World War II artwork. When it was finished, I thought it was fantastic – the best thriller ever written! My only problem was, I wasn't sure what to do with my masterpiece.

One day, while having lunch with my friend, F. Jim Smith, (he was Bing Crosby's personal artist and illustrator for the Marlboro Man) I told him about Old Masters. Brimming with enthusiasm, Jim said, “Let’s call my friend Mary, she'll know what to do.” Well, his friend “Mary” turned out to be Mary Higgins Clark! Who, as you probably know, is the Queen of Suspense and one of the best-selling mystery writers of all time.

I thought to myself, “No way is this going to happen.” But two hours later Jim called back with a message from Mary. “Come to New York and meet me at the Mystery Writers of America symposium.” Oh, heck yes, I thought!

When I arrived at the symposium, this tiny dynamo in a gorgeous Chanel suit grabbed my hand and proceeded to introduce me to New York’s finest agents, editors, and publishers! As Mary handed me off to each one, I did my little song and dance and presented them with a spiffy book cover I’d had my senior art director design.

Did I sell my Old Masters manuscript that day? No, but it was read by Penguin and Random House. And I received offers from 5 different agents to represent me and ended up with a dandy offer to write a cozy series.

A fairytale ending, yes? But that was almost nine years ago. Could this still happen today with publishers clinging miserly to every dollar, allowing author’s backlists to go out of print, and letting new (good!) manuscripts languish in slush piles?

If you want it bad enough, I really believe you can make it happen. Pour your heart into your story, make sure it’s a killer plotline, add twists and tangles, and then prove, prove, prove to a publisher that you’ve got the platform to promote it.

I’ll also let you in on a very weird secret. Editors (who are really acquisition editors, not mark-it-with-a-red-pen editors) don’t really know what they’re looking for. That’s why you have to tell them that you have the next big thing in publishing. If you can, gently pull them aside at a conference and perform your own animated song and dance. Because if you’re convinced, they’ll be convinced.

One more critical thing. You must also learn the subtle art of the one-page query letter. It’s the only way you’ll score the big enchilada - a killer agent. Which, in publishing’s uncertain times, is the best way in the front door!

Ah. You’re probably wondering who my killer agent is? After three years of writing, guerrilla marketing, and proving I could actually sell books, I finally landed the same agent that represents Mary. And every day, rain or shine, I thank my lucky stars.------------------------------------------------In Laura Child's past life, she was CEO and creative director of Mission Critical Marketing, with offices in Minneapolis, MN, Austin, TX, and San Jose, CA, where they handled marketing and advertising for medical, technology, and financial clients.

She's married to Dr. Robert Poor, a professor of Chinese and Japanese art history at the University of Minnesota. They live on two acres of woods in Plymouth, MN and have two snarky Chinese Shar-Pei dogs. They travel to Asia, enjoy art collecting, and serve on the boards of a couple of non-profit organizations.

Oh yes, and she's the author of the Scrapbooking Mysteries, Tea Shop Mysteries, and Cackleberry Club Mysteries.Her most recent mystery, TRAGIC MAGIC, was just released. And don't miss EGGS BENEDICT ARNOLD, coming December 1st.

November 07, 2009

So, do you have my nouns? Some days there isn't a single one to be heard in our house. In chat between my husband and me, nada. It's not like the dogs can eat them. They've just disappeared. Take today's morning conversation:

"You know, the …" Voice trails off again. Cute silver head is scratched. He is wondering what is wrong with his wife that she can't tear herself from the blood and gore story to answer the simplest question. "Things, the things. I need them to start the um."

"Oh right. I think I saw them on the whatzit, next to your … Did you check there?"

"What whatzit?" He is starting to get annoyed, but doesn't want to show it, at least not until he finds the things.

"What things?" I counter. He's not the only one who can get annoyed.

"I had them when I got back yesterday because I used them to open the …"

"Did you look on the whatzit?" I point upwards toward the bedroom, which has several whatzits, one of them with things on it.

Grumbling starts. "Now I'm going to be late meeting what's-his-name at--." Snapping fingers follows grumbles, trying to get a handle on what's-his-name. A noun is after all person, place or thing. The persons and places can vanish too. Snapping fingers will not bring them back, as we've learned the hard way.

Of course, it doesn't pay for me to get too uppity. It's merely a matter of time before I find myself saying "Have you seen that pile of stuff that was here yesterday? There's a lot of important er … "

"What pile of stuff?"

"You know, the, um. It was this high, over there by the you know."

"Your voice trailed off. What stuff again?"

Of course, he has no choice but to cooperate. After all, didn't I help him find those things on the whatzit just this morning? "Are you certain you didn't move it somewhere?"

"I don't think so."

"Sure you did.. It's right over by the gizmo near the the uh. Oops, watch out for the queerthing on the -- . Are you all right? Did you hurt your …?"

Okay, all this, including missing noun injuries, might be expected if we didn't own six thousand books, including at least eighteen dictionaries. Or if we hadn't both read obsessively as children. I took care of fiction, he was in charge of non-fiction. Even if I wasn't as a friend once described me 'a known talker'. So it's not like we didn't ever have a supply of fancy upscale and occasionally obscure nouns to sprinkle in our sentences, insert into conversations or meaningful questions.

Of course, what good are dictionaries when you have to check everything under S for stuff or T for thing?

I put my lapses down to the brain-frying activity writing two books this year. They each contained mountains of nouns, many of them scary if not dangerous. That must be what's edging them out. But seriously, what's his excuse? Oh well, it's not so bad, really. As long as our verbs don't start to, you know … um.------------------------------------------------------------- Mary Jane Maffini is the author of the Charlotte Adams mysteries and two Canadian series: the Ottawa-based Camilla MacPhee books and the Fiona Silk novels set in West Quebec. Her latest book, Law & Disorder, the sixth in the Camilla MacPhee series, is absolutely crawling with nouns. Verbs, too.

October 17, 2009

I caught up with tabloid reporter and amateur sleuth Cassie O'Malley recently at the Eggery. The Eggery is nothing special - that is, of course, unless you like your eggs over easy, thick slabs of homemade bread dripping with butter, bacon extra-crispy, home fries extra-spicy, and coffee so rich you can smell it from your car. Between bites of eggs benedict (actually, as a result of a typo on the menu, they were eggs bebedict, but that's another story entirely), Cassie agreed to answer a few questions.

Jeff Markowitz: You've built up something of a cult following with your stories in the Jersey Knews.

Cassie O’Malley: Is that a question?

Jeff: Let me start again. Does it surprise you that you've become something of an underground sensation?

Cassie: I can't say it's what I set out to write about, but it could be worse. You know, there will always be people who are interested in stories about space aliens and sea monsters, about psychic spy rings and Siamese triplets.

Jeff: You’ve had some remarkable stories in the magazine. But I haven’t seen your byline in quite a while. Is everything okay?

Cassie: Most people would call it writer’s block.

Jeff: Is that what you call it?

Cassie: I guess I’d say I’ve been in a bit of a slump.

Jeff: How do you deal with that?

Cassie: Tullamore Dew.

Jeff: Huh?

Cassie: Irish whiskey

Jeff: You mentioned that tabloid stories weren’t the kind of stories you originally wanted to write. What did you set out to write?

Cassie: When I was a student at Princeton, I had it all figured out. I was going to be an investigative reporter, walking the halls of power in Washington, a force for truth, beauty, and the American way, holding politicians to their promises by the power of my words, exposing the hypocrites and the cheats and becoming rich and famous in the process.

Jeff: What happened?

Cassie: Life happened. Or more to the point, death happened.

Jeff: Death happened?

Cassie: I married my college sweetheart, and less than a year later, he died in his sleep. You know, when a man dies in his sleep, we console ourselves with the conventional wisdom that it’s a peaceful way to die. And yet, that quiet winter morning, some few months after relocating to our condo in Doah, snow falling silently on the Pine Barrens, a dog barking in the distance, I rolled over to give Rob a good morning kiss and he was dead, terror frozen permanently in his eyes and in my memory.

Jeff: Do you mind if I change the subject? Recently, you've gained some attention for your activities as an amateur sleuth.

Cassie: Yes. I have.

Jeff: How did that happen?

Cassie: I was working on a story when I found the first dead body. I just figured I ought to follow the story to its logical conclusion.

Jeff: What can you tell us about your new case?

Cassie: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder is a warm and fuzzy Christmas story. You see, my new boss gave me this crappy assignment at the shopping mall. Then Big Mack turned up dead in the men’s room, his throat slit. One of the mall security guards, a real putz looking for fifteen minutes of fame, says he caught Big Mack with stolen property, and in the ensuing struggle, Big Mack suffered the fatal knife wound. The police are skeptical, but Big Mack’s son, the even bigger Little Mack is determined to avenge his father’s murder.

Jeff: And you say it’s a warm and fuzzy Christmas story?

Cassie: Well, maybe it’s not so warm and fuzzy after all. But it is a Christmas story.

Jeff: Someone told me you used to have your own blog.

Cassie: I wanted a place to tell people I wasn't just a character in a book. That I was a real person. With hopes, dreams, ambitions. Disappointments. That the Cassie O'Malley Mysteries were real stories, my stories. And that you were just a pseudonym. My invention. The fictional author.

Jeff: So which is it?

Cassie: Yes. Which is it?------------------------------------ Jeff Markowitz
is the author of the Cassie O’Malley Mysteries, an
amateur sleuth series set deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. His latest release, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder, is now available. “If you’ve ever been
to a shopping mall during the Christmas season, you understand the urge to
kill.” Jeff is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and the Mystery Writers of
America.

October 03, 2009

For me, it often feels like there’s an arm-wrestling match going on between my real life and my writing life. The prize, of course, is my time.

My children are still young and need me for many things—urgently, it seems, if they’ve seen me sit down with the laptop. A heaping serving of Mom Guilt is spooned out every time I say, “After I read this message” or “When I finish this scene.”

Messages related to revisions and promotions are “work e-mails” in my mind, even though I read them from my home computer. I take them as seriously as I do the e-mails I receive at my day job, but my kids don’t see me at the office so they don’t understand the nuances between Fun Mommy and Focused Mommy. Fun Mommy plays Trouble, fills water balloons, and colors with magic markers. Focused Mommy is usually in a bad mood because she can’t finish this paragraph while you’re carrying on about the Hannah Montana eraser your sister just stole out of your backpack.

Don’t get me wrong. Real life, especially with little kids, is great fun and these days with them will be the crowning jewel of my short time on the planet. But as a writer I confess I’m often torn. Don’t tell my son, but Dora the Explorer frankly doesn’t interest me, so when I’m snuggled up on the couch with him, I’m secretly working out plot points.And the mental multi-tasking doesn’t stop there.

I think about writing while driving, when I’m working out, during boring meetings, and even when people are talking to me. That last bit sounds rude, I know, but let me explain. The truth is, the funnier and more interesting I find you, the more likely I am to be thinking about writing while talking to you. I’m stealing your material. But don’t worry. You won’t recognize it when I’m finished.

My point is near.

Sometimes I imagine a utopian scenario in which I get to spend full days with my laptop in a quiet house with no distractions. That’d be great for a while, but eventually what would I write about?

Much as I long for more solitude to write, I sometimes think that life getting in my way is paradoxical serendipity. Real life and its quirky people and bizarre dramas are part of what make a convincing story. So I think as writers, when life gets in our way, once in a while we should step back and take comfort in knowing that somehow, it’s all sinking in. The next time we get a quiet moment at the keyboard, real life is what will brighten the page.--------------------------------------------Rachel Brady’s debut suspense novel, Final Approach, was released in August. She works as a biomedical engineer at NASA and lives outside of Houston, Texas, with her husband and their three children. Visit her on-line at www.RachelBrady.net or read about her experiences as a new author at her blog, Write It Anyway. Fellow internet junkies can follow her on Twitter or add her as a friend on Goodreads.

If you’re in Houston, please join Rachel at Murder by the Book next Saturday, October 10th at 4:30 for the launch of Final Approach.

September 26, 2009

On my blog tour to promote my latest Crispin Guest Medieval Noir, SERPENT IN THE THORNS, I’ve been talking about the medieval myths I’ve encountered while discussing my books with the public. There are many misconceptions about this very interesting time period.

Today, I’d like to talk about that myth that medievals used a variety of exotic sauces over their meat to disguise the fact that the meat was rotten. And to talk about that, we’ve got to start the discussion off by exploring those spices.

Spices were very precious commodities in the medieval world. Most of what we consider familiar and fairly inexpensive accompaniments in our own kitchens were some of the most expensive and exotic fare to European tables. Salt could be gotten locally but it was an extensive process to extract it and so salt itself was expensive. We think very little when a peppercorn escapes from our peppermills, but each peppercorn was precious. Cinnamon, cardamom, cubeb, mace, nutmeg—these were not grown in European gardens and had to be imported from the mysterious East. In fact, it wasn’t new lands that made Christopher Columbus sail the ocean blue in the year of 1492, but a new path to India so that Europeans didn’t have to fall prey to the Arab spice traders and their high prices.

Even sugar was considered a spice and was sold in conical loaves. If you wanted something to sweeten your palette, then you kept bees for the honey, a very ancient past time, by the way. Egyptians have paintings of beekeeping on their walls.

So, logically, if your spices were so expensive, why spend the something like $50 to mask the rottenness of a $2 cut of meat? No, this was the medieval equivalent of kicking it up a notch. Sauces were used to impress the guest and please the palette. Meat sauces were full of flavors that Europeans today would not recognize except in an old-fashioned mincemeat pie (one that included beef and suet). Cinnamon, cardamom, nuts, and dried fruit were often used in these recipes. If you favor Moroccan meat dishes, then you are tasting European medieval dining.

So how did they preserve all this meat? Remember, in many instances, they were getting it fresh from the butcher or out of their own yards and fields. But it could be preserved in any number of ways: salted, smoked, dried, pickled. If meat was salted and then soaked and washed to get the salt out, you certainly might want a sauce to kill off some of the saltiness, but not always. Other fare included fowl of many varieties, including egrets and swans. Doves, chickens, ducks, and geese were among the fowl kept around, and fresh fish, shell fish, and eels rounded out the watery fare. Venison and wild boar were for richer tables. Many had a family pig which would forage during the summer and fall. As the winter drew on it could be slaughtered and preserved in a huge number of ways allowing the family their meat throughout the winter.

So that’s all well and good, but how do we know about these medieval recipes? Well, in the fourteenth century—when my book is set—we saw the beginnings of cookbooks. Prior to that, these “cookbooks” were physicians’ notebooks full of folk prescriptions. These originally came from the Middle East. Gradually, cookbooks became popular to in the larger households. Richard II’s household also had a cookbook. But these did not give recipes for Medieval Meatloaf. In other words, they weren’t writing down recipes that everyone already knew. They were for special feasts, to pass down spectacular and favorite recipes to the next generations. Creating a cockatrice, for instance, a mythological beast with the head of a bird and the body of a four-legged creature, was a special treat. It explains how to do this: scald a capon and cut him in two at the waist and do the same to a pig and sew the halves together. Not exactly meatloaf night.

September 19, 2009

Some rules we learn as children: Don’t talk to strangers. Wash your hands. Do your homework. And they stick with us.

I don’t consider myself shy. Sre, I don’t like to approach a total stranger and begin chatting, but that’s not because I’m shy. Reserved, maybe, and mostly just lazy. What are the odds of them having anything interesting enough to say to make it worth wasting ten or fifteen minutes of my valuable down time that could be spent here by the wall, nursing my drink?

But at a writer’s convention, I’m not there to drink (well, not primarily). I’m there to meet people, network, and pitch my book. This is business and I have to treat it as such, I tell myself sternly. But mingle at a cocktail party? Surely there must be a better way.

Nevertheless, I was determined to make the most of the Thrillerfest convention in The Big and Very Expensive Apple. I expected it to be full of snobby New York types who wouldn’t talk to me anyway, but it was costing me an arm and a leg just to be there and by golly (for I am my Depression-era parents’ daughter!) it was going to be worth it! So this is what I did: I took the Attending Authors list of nearly two hundred people and went through it, looking up every single author’s website. I made up a list including their publisher, the type of book they wrote, a thumbnail photo and one biographical fact which I could use to begin a conversation. “So, you live in New Orleans?” “So, you studied Egyptology?” “So, you used to be a fraud investigator?” I tried to find a topic that I had something in common with, that would give me some sort of follow-up avenue to say a word about myself.

At first, all I got was an inferiority complex. Everyone seemed so impressive, and oh by the way, my website stunk. Next to one woman who had a PhD, had traveled the world, held high-level positions and had a few best-sellers under her belt, I wrote: “Don’t even bother talking to this woman.” I couldn’t think of a single, solitary thing we might have in common.

But I persevered. It took almost a month.

When done, I spent the next few weeks paging through the list whenever I had a moment, trying to memorize their faces and my intro line. I didn’t get this done perfectly, of course, and I did concentrate mostly on my own publisher’s authors because I could possibly run into them on four different occasions. I have a less-than-photographic memory and I’m terrible with faces, but after a while the details began to stick.

Then I got to the convention.

The other attendees were not snobby at all, approachable and friendly. But still, I was happier with every minute that I had done my homework!

Because I had something to say, I was not afraid to approach people. Because I could say something about them instead of me, I didn’t have to feel I was imposing or trying to hard-sell myself. I could force myself into action, because having done all this work I fully intended to put it to use! The facts I mentioned were all posted on their own websites, so I didn’t have to worry about bringing up a topic they didn’t want to discuss or would make them uncomfortable…or having them think I’m some sort of stalker. I like to think I helped out my fellow authors, maybe—because not all of us are Sandra Brown or Lee Child. We’re not accustomed to big crowds or working the room. Maybe a lot of us there could use a little support to put down the glass and step away from the wall. And by the time I had learned all these interesting things about these interesting people, I was dying to talk to each and every one of them.

So break the rule about talking to strangers. Keep the one about doing your homework.-------------------------------------------Lisa Black is a forensic specialist for a police department in Florida. Before that she worked as a forensic scientist in Cleveland, Ohio. Evidence of Murder is her fourth published thriller. Visit her website: www.Lisa-Black.com.

September 12, 2009

I’m not much of a fan. I don’t collect artifacts or mementos of the famous. I don’t follow celebrities or create Google alerts for the names of people I admire. In fact, I am so out of touch with the Zeitgeist I am often mystified by the feature in the Washington Post called “Reliable Source,” which rather breathlessly lists sightings of celebrities in town to promote their pet causes. Who are these people spotted at, for example, the DC Spy Museum or Café Milano, wearing jeans, a baseball cap, and a button-down shirt? (“Reliable Source” always tells us what the stars are wearing and/or eating, presumably because someone cares.) Notice I don’t give you specific names or examples. I might recognize Brad Pitt if I tripped over him—especially if he had Angelina and the kids swarming around him—but fully eighty percent of the celebs mentioned in this column I’ve never heard of.

Yes, it is getting to the point where my cluelessness is embarrassing, at least to those in my orbit under the age of thirty. No doubt it’s the first step on that slippery slope to Old Fuddydom.

All this by way of confessing that from the moment I heard Greenway, Agatha Christie’s vacation home in Devonshire, was being opened to the public this year, I knew I had to get there. In fact, I think the phrase “If I have to crawl on my hands and knees” was called into play. Fortunately, there are passenger ferries that can take you to Greenway from Torquay (Agatha’s birthplace) and from other towns along the coast of Devon.

But it wasn’t that easy to get there by train from Oxford, our starting point, so was it worth it? Definitely. For one thing, the area where she purchased the house and grounds lives up to Agatha’s claim of being “the loveliest place in the world.”

What do we hope to gain from visits to the haunts of the great—or do we hope to gain anything? For my part, the journey helped orient me in terms of Agatha’s life and her stories—places that were mere names are far more meaningful to me now. And yes, I think there was an element of wishing that by standing where she had stood, seeing how she worked and lived, inspiration for another great puzzle of a book like And Then There Were None might come to me. (Still waiting on that.)

Are there any writers’ haunts you’ve been to that have really made an impression, or that you would like to visit one day?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------G.M. Malliet’s Death of a Cozy Writer, previously a Malice Domestic Grant winner, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2008. It has also been nominated for 2009 Anthony, David, and Macavity awards and a Left Coast Crime Award for best police procedural. It won an IPPY Silver Medal in the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category. Kirkus Reviews named it one of the best books of 2008.The second book in the St. Just series is Death and the Lit Chick (April 2009) and the third is Death at the Alma Mater (January 2010). Malliet and her husband live in Virginia.

September 05, 2009

Four years ago I put my youngest child on the bus for her first full day of school—and was left with seven hours of time to fill. Or should I say “kill”? I decided to write a book. A murder mystery.

It seems like a big leap, but I love to read and write, and in college, I majored in English. During my career, I’d written human resources and marketing manuals, very dry but nevertheless important communications. Along the way, teachers and managers had said, “You know, you’re a very good writer.” I decided to put that to the test.

With time on my hands and old compliments ringing in my ears, I started to write. I wanted to write a mystery series, because I read a lot of them and thought I knew the elements of a good one. From Lorraine Bartlett, I learned about the Sisters In Crime chapter, The Guppies, an online mystery group with critique group opportunities. I signed up immediately, craving feedback.

I made all the classic mistakes with my first mystery. I wrote characters like people I knew and spent lots of time describing real places. The only person in my first critique group willing to read my story said, “Something has got to happen.” I took this to heart.

I packed up my characters and moved them to a golf course. With positive feedback from my new critique group, I finished a novel. During one of her contests, the infamous Miss Snark gave me positive feedback on my one line pitch. Then an agent read the first chapter and asked for the whole manuscript. Was I ever excited! He rejected it within a week. One more partial request and many more rejections followed. I made the rookie mistake of getting excited over form letter rejections that said my work “showed promise”. Still, I felt like I had something to offer. But I didn’t try to fix that book. I started something new.

I wrote a standalone book. A few agents requested partials. One west coast agent made some snippy comments based on the synopsis. I decided to avoid her in the future. A New York agent requested two chapters, then two more, and ultimately rejected it. I made note of him, because he was responsive, professional, and liked my writing.

Then I hit on the idea for my Broken Vow mystery series. Ideas and words flowed. I leapt up from the dinner table and out of bed at night to get them down. With all day to write, I had For Better, For Murder completed in four months. This time, I had ten people critique it before marketing it.

A couple months after the end of my second year of writing, I went back to the New York agent who had expressed interest in my standalone book and offered him For Better, For Murder. He responded quickly and positively. I knew it was a match. What joy!

All the positive feedback from my critique group and manuscript swap partners had me fired up enough to complete the second book in the series. Finding an agent guaranteed I’d finish the third immediately.

My agent worked almost a year to find For Better, For Murder a home. But in the end, when he contacted my publisher, an offer was made within days. The contract took a little longer to hammer out.

Never the most patient person, I’d tabled writing and accepted a part-time job near the end of the year I’d waited to find a publisher. Good thing, too, because actually getting published took eleven more months of waiting. My job killed the days and hours.

This week, four years later, For Better, For Murder is on the market. Kirkus Reviews said, “Bork juggles multiple puzzles deftly in her witty debut.”

Such a thrill! I’ve resigned my part-time job. Now I’m motivated to write some more. -----------------------------Lisa Bork’s debut novel, For Better, For Murder, hits stores this week. It’s the first book in the Broken Vows mystery series from Midnight Ink. Lisa has a BA. in English and a M.B.A. in Marketing, and she worked in humans resources and marketing before becoming a stay-at-home mom and author. For more information, visit www.LisaBork.com.

June 07, 2009

My life has always revolved around books. I have been a librarian, a reviewer, an editor, and now author of three mystery series and nearly two dozen short stories. But most of all, I have been a reader. I was reading -- as many of you were -- before I went to school. I've been caught up in a story on a bus and missed my stop by twenty miles. More than once, I've slipped away to finish a few paragraphs at what should have been a romantic moment. I was busy reading fiction when I should have been studying Physics, but never mind that. I once got so caught up in mystery reading that I bought a mystery bookstore with my friend! Books and reading: that's the story of my life. That is why Book Expo America felt so wonderful to me: like Christmas at the end of May, with a touch of Disneyland, and even a bit of Tooth Fairy sparkle. BEA is the Mecca of the North American book world and I got to attend in New York City this year.

Was it worth the sixteen-hour round trip drive from Ottawa, Ontario? You betcha. My husband is also a reader, and he'll show you his six thousand books to prove it! We set off like a pair of eloping teenagers, heading for the Big Apple with a song in our greedy little book-lovin' hearts. But for me there was an added benefit. I was going to be signing my new book Death Loves a Messy Desk: a Charlotte Adams mystery at the Mystery Writers of America booth.

The show itself was quite overwhelming. Somewhere around 1500 exhibitors, one thousand publishers, a crush of editors, sales reps, publicists, book packagers, agents, authors, illustrators, and in the case of my husband, guests. People jostle through crowds and line-ups snaked through corridors as signings take place. Of course, as an author, there were three kinds of folks I cared most about: book sellers, librarians and just plain readers. Oh all right, I have to admit, I get excited by authors too, but you probably guessed that already. The name tags and designations made great reading. Best of all, as I walked by some of these booths, people pressed things into my hot little hands. I came home with quite a haul. (Let's see if I survive Boomer Yoga!)

But in the back of my mind was the worry: Would my two boxes of books sent by Berkley Prime Crime actually make it through chaos to the MWA booth and be found in time? (P.S. That's me in Grand Central Station, getting "sniffed" by the sniffer dog (who was accompanied by his human NYPD partner).)

As we arrived breathless at the MWA booth, the redoubtable Margery Flax (and her team) had everything under control. Talk about organized! My professional organizer protagonist, Charlotte Adams, could take lessons from Margery. The books were stacked in an orderly fashion. The signing times was clearly posted. Each author had a name tent card. Water and soft drinks stood chilled and ready. I hovered as my friend Mary Stanton AKA Claudia Bishop got cleaned out of her new book Angel's Advocate. When my turn came, I was between Karen Olson and Toni Kelner. My red pen was ready, bookmarks stacked, lipstick reapplied, smile glued on. As we took our seats, my heart sank. No line-up! But as they say, if you build it, they will come. And come they did. We too were wiped out of books before we knew it. At the end, a lovely pair of booksellers from New Jersey arrived and there was a scramble to find one between them. As for Karen and Toni's latest books, I've already ordered those through my local Indie!

In the end we staggered, tired but happy, onto the shuttle to our hotel, ready to look at our new finds and in my case, to remember the smiling faces of the hundred or so folks who walked away with signed copies of Death Loves a Messy Desk. They'll be new friends for me and for Charlotte Adams too, if all goes well.

There's always talk that these huge book events are going the way of Tyrannosaurus Rex, stamped out by big box stores and the shift to online sales and e-books. In Canada, my beloved Book Expo Canada, which always had a terrific presence from Crime Writers of Canada, is no more. Although, BEA attendance is down 14%, that's a slight dip in this economy, it seems to me. It appears that this show is healthy enough. And it's proof that no matter what the venue, books can still create a serious buzz with booksellers, librarians and readers.

I think that's a very good thing!----------------------------------------- Mary Jane Maffini writes the Camilla MacPhee books and the Fiona Silk series as well as Charlotte Adams's adventures when she's not reading. Her latest book, Death Loves A Messy Desk, is now available. Visit Mary's Jane's Web site: www.maryjanemaffini.com

June 06, 2009

Much to my surprise, I have made a book trailer. Compared to the average third grader, I am a computer dinosaur. I try to keep up but there's always something new. When I saw my first book trailer, I was certain I would have to hire someone to make one for me. After all, how would I ever be able to make anything akin to a movie? Turns out it's easy with the right software.

I used iMovie from Apple and the learning curve wasn't nearly as daunting as I feared. It's so much fun that I'm inclined to make more. Someday, I'll look back on this first attempt at a book trailer and I'll shake my head -- how could I have thought that would do? There are lots of tricks I still have to learn, and I'd love to use some live video clips. But for now, I'm thrilled that I didn't have to hire anyone, and that I learned something new.

A few things to consider. Keep it short. Thirty to 60 seconds is perfectly adequate. Diana suggests making big use of your cover. That hadn't occurred to me, but that's what we want people to remember, and it's an excellent advertising tool. Like a synopsis, it's easy to make a trailer too complicated. Keep it simple. An effective trailer doesn't have to be complex. Diana's very funny trailer is a great example.

If you use iMovie, listen to their free music options before you go to pay sites. They offer an array of clips that run for a matter of seconds, which is what you want. There are a lot of pay sites offering original music, but focus on the very short clips because that's what you will need. iMovie, and probably other movie programs, offer a host of sound effects, too. I can't wait to make a trailer for a Halloween book!

Photos and video clips are, in my opinion, the hardest to come by. Again, there are plenty of pay sites on-line. But if you take some appropriate photos yourself, you can avoid those fees and make your trailer exactly what you envision.